Backing-up: Chester, York and north Yorkshire plus a dabble in Essex and Kent

 

Backing-up: Chester, York and north Yorkshire plus a dabble in Essex and Kent

Chester is a historic Roman town, built originally around the classical north-south and east-west street layout. There’s a thought that the Romans built here with a view to Deva Victrix being their ‘capital’ of what is now Britain and Ireland: if you look at a map of both countries, Chester is about dead centre. In the 1600s/1700s it was one of the most important cities in Britain.

In those times it was on the coast and therefore an important port, but the river Mersey changed course which left Chester stranded and the city declined until the Victorian era when tourism became a major money-earner. By then the town was pretty shabby, so the Victorians tarted the buildings up in the classic black and white half-timbered style that was common centuries earlier and for which Chester is renowned today. So, all those lovely frontages e.g. in the photo below are actually about 120 years old, not 400 or 500 years old as I thought they would be. But they usually conceal very old medieval spaces in behind, often below ground level like grottos, some of which are now fancy wine bars and the like. Very beguiling.

 

A unique feature of Chester is the ‘rows’, basically two-tiered medieval shopping galleries dating back to the 13^th century. Fortunately, these have survived intact and you can walk along continuous ‘rows’ for 100’s of yards with interesting shops, cafes, bars etc. all along (see below). Very cool.

 

Chester is well worth a visit!

We had visited York in the late 1980s when we were living in England, but only briefly and I remembered narrow streets and enticing alleyways so was keen to re-visit. But it didn’t quite live up to what I remembered – still fascinating, but maybe I had mis-remembered. The city was absolutely chocka with people (we were there on a long weekend) so that probably didn’t help. We had planned to take a guided walking tour, like we did in Chester, but there were so many people we couldn’t get on one which was a shame.

 The Shambles, part of the old town in York

York Minster is mind-blowingly huge and is THE big attraction in the city. We spent at least 2 hours in there, in awe at the grandeur. There is a fantastic display of the history of the town (it was also founded by the Romans) and its development in the lower levels of the building, one of the best info-graphic we’ve encountered.

 York Minster

The original city walls are mostly intact and walkable, offering good views, but I’d say the walls of Conwy were much more impressive.

Very impressive, however, was the day we spent visiting Whitby and Staithes on the northern Yorkshire coast, and driving back to our B&B in Sheriff Hutton, north of York, via the North York Moors. The two coastal towns are fantastic: both centred on old harbours for the fishing vessels that were the basis for their existence, with amazing views from the cliff tops above which stretch into long, lovely walks. Could have spent a lot more time up on those cliff tops!

 Whitby

Staithes

North York Moors are also fabulous – higher than the Yorkshire Dales, with heather-covered hills on the tops yielding to grazing farms on the lower slopes. Pp on the tops there’s a relatively recent history of mining for ironstone which was used in the Industrial Revolution, but now the whole area is a National Park which protects the amazing landscape.

 North Yorkshire Moors: The Lion Inn pub to the left

Our route ‘home’ from Staithes that day was from Danby on the northern edge of the Moors, via a road above a valley called Rosedale which gave awesome views and featured one pub sitting lonely among the heather but busy-as (The Lion Inn, photo below). The road then dropped down to two lovely villages, Hutton-le-hole and Lastingham which are typical of the northern Yorkshire countryside and which we enjoyed just walking around (they’re small!).

 Hutton-le-hole

From Yorkshire, we sort-of made it up as we went, heading south for Worthing. We stayed one night at Huntingdon, near Cambridge. Didn’t visit Cambridge because we’d been there before. But we did visit a town called Maldon, on the Essex coast, where we ‘fluked’ the last two available spaces on a 2-hour cruise on an old Thames sailing barge out on the River Blackwater. Several of these historic boats have been restored and now reside at Maldon, doing tours like this. They have that unique 6-sail formation you see in the photo designed for manoeuvrability and for going under bridges (don’t ask me about the technical terms for all these features!!). They are wooden, and flat-bottomed so they can operate in the shallow estuaries around London and the Thames. They chug along at only a few knots at the best of times, so were quickly out-competed by motorised vessels in the freighting business so were ‘retired’ for re-cycling of the hardwood timber, or diverted into the tourist trade.

The boat we went on was built in 1902. They’re charming old vessels, and the time out on the water was a delight. A huge afternoon tea of scones and clotted cream plus cake was part of the deal – so, if it’s offered, you have to oblige, right?!

Final stop before hitting Worthing again was in Kent, at a B&B in a village called Speldhurst near Seven Oaks.  We went there for no particular reason … but soon discovered this is an area of charming small villages like Speldhurst, Penshurst and Chiddingstone. 

Chiddingstone

Large estates at Penshurst Place were a good visit, as was Knole, near Seven Oaks – the latter being founded originally as an archbishop’s residence but subsequently developed into a huge palace-like complex under different owners. Both had a lot of history associated with them, including such celebrities as Anne Boleyn (who lived near Penshurst at Hever Castle and of course attracted the attentions of Henry XIII who ended up owning Penshurst as you do), the Seymour family (another link to Henry VIII – Jane Seymour being one of his 6 wives), Vita Sackville-West (Knole was owned by the Sackville family until passing to the National Trust in c. 1950s) and Virginia Woolf. Again, don’t ask me to explain all the intricacies and politics of the English aristocracy, it’s complicated!

 Penshurst Place

We got back to Worthing on 1^st September after doing a memorable walk in the sunshine on the Seven Sisters with stunning views and welcome open space to stretch the legs without having to continuously dodge life-threatening collisions with pedestrians (plus dogs, pushers etc etc) and vehicular traffic. So relaxing!

 

In the preceding three weeks we covered about 1900 miles by car and roughly 380 km by foot (according to the pedometer on my phone)! To put this in perspective, Christchurch to Picton is 330 km by road. Also (again, according to the pedometer) we gained about 2500m in altitude. I reckon that would be the equivalent of the vertical climb on Aorangi, from the Hermitage – but of course, our gradients and surfaces were somewhat easier!! We saw lots of different and interesting things, did some exhilarating walks, and stayed in a whole variety of different B&Bs (mostly good).

Now we have the Cornwall junket to follow – a tempting dessert after the excellent main course!